Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahickon)

A.W. Tillinghast crafted the Flourtown golf course at The Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1922. In the new millennium, the layout was renamed Wissahickon, after the creek which borders the property.

In 2013, architect Keith Foster lovingly restored the Wissahickon course to a standard that Tillinghast would approve of.

“There were no real blue prints at all,” Foster said. “I think that was really the challenge, truthfully. It was Tillinghast’s home course and he laid out in theory a skeleton routing, with the belief back then to lay it out and as the golf course matured to go ahead and introduce features that he would want to put in over time. The problem, of course, was that none of the features were ever documented.

What I basically had was the routing that he had and then I had the green pads that he had placed, but in terms of tee positions, they were all out of kilter and none of the bunkers existed where they were placed or where he would have placed them.”

The PGA of America awarded Philadelphia Cricket Club the honour of hosting the 2015 PGA Professional National Championship on both the Wissahickon and Militia Hill courses. Take a bow please Mr Foster.

Writing in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses Tom Doak commented as follows: “'The Tillie in Philly' was sometimes elevated in local rankings because the Flynn courses tend to split the vote, but a recent restoration by Keith Foster has the locals drooling. Perhaps I was too embarrassed to notice its finer qualities after playing my approach to the par-4 2nd off the roof of the locker room."